


Slide

by ivyspinners



Category: Emelan - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Grief/Mourning, Multi, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships, Wakes & Funerals, off-screen character deaths
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-04
Updated: 2011-06-04
Packaged: 2018-11-22 08:19:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 4,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11376270
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivyspinners/pseuds/ivyspinners
Summary: And every time they do this, they slide further into despair.





	1. Prologue: Lark's Funeral I

There was pelting rain, and there was a cutting wind, and Sandry supposed she ought to be surprised hailstones weren't pelting from the sky. Sandry shuddered, even as her woolen cloak wrapped more firmly - like sheep twining around a favored farmer - around her arms, shoulders and waist. Water slid down its surface like it had been oiled and ran down the lines of her calves. She was so _cold_.

Dedicates, Sandry had already learnt once before, were given different funeral rites according to the temple to which he or she belonged. Lark, for all the light and air she brought into shattered lives, was earth, and so upon her death - slipping and sliding away - she was buried beneath layers of dirt.

She held her cloak tighter; it did not help.

Suddenly, a pair of arms wrapped around her from behind. Heated, brown arms that had been by her side, when they comforted Tris once before. Daja murmured, as though soothing a drowning kitten, "I've got you."

Briar slid up to stand beside her, his tattoos sprouting masses of black leaves and midnight blue blossoms, taking her hand - another blaze of heat.

Tris's presence announced itself before the mage herself did: a space of calm, still air wrapped around the small group, free from rain. As the wind abruptly died, Sandry was left feeling as though her face was on fire.

"We've got you," Tris said, standing on her other side and no longer crying - calmer, now, though outside their circle, lightning still flickered sporadically in the leaden sky.

And Sandry clung to them, to their warmth, and swore she would never let go.

-

tbc


	2. Niko's Funeral I

The first time Tris slept with Sandry, Niko's funeral was a burning brand in her mind.

They'd cried. Both of them, as his casket was lowered to the ground, and Tris had thought Niko an utter hypocrite. How many times had he lectured the family about refraining from throwing around magic? Only to die, himself, from magical exhaustion... Three minutes, and her teacher of over thirteen years was gone, and Daja, Tris, Briar and Sandry leaned against one another at his funeral.

"He should have waited for me," Tris gasped into Sandry's shoulder, as the younger woman buried her face in Tris's neck. "To - ah - help him." She shivered at the sensation climbing her spine.

"He should have waited for _anyone_." Sandry's voice was hoarse - from her sobs, or from the gasps and warm kisses that had preceded their tumble into Sandry's bed at their shared house.

She was careful to block her mind off Daja and Briar. Briar's nocturnal affairs had colored her dreams (and Daja's and Sandry's) for nearly a week before she'd realized what was going on, and reminded him accordingly to keep some thing behind closed doors; she would not make the same mistake.

Though Tris almost never slumbered well while sharing her bed - no matter how platonic it be - Sandry's warm limbs were there to hold onto whenever she woke in the middle of the night. It was never long before she fell, once more, asleep.

-

tbc


	3. Niko's Funeral II

She was in the forge, pounding metal.

The muscles of her back stretched and contracted, outlines sharply defined by her perfectly fitted shirt. Her tools glittered in the dim light. She paused, for a moment, to wipe gleaming sweat off her brow, and said, "Are you going to stand there the entire evening?"

"Caught," Briar said, stepping across the doorway. He padded, still soundless even after all these years, to her side, blinking away motes and sparks of soft white magic.

As he drew near, he could see the faint quiver of her hand, the way she gripped the metal just a little too tightly. But he could sense nothing from her - hadn't been able to, since Tris and Sandry's connections slammed shut - and her blow, slamming metal against metal, was still perfect from long force of habit.

Briar stared at the play of shadows across her face; the play of muscle beneath skin; and said, "Daj."

She shook her head - he saw a flicker of Niko, of a casket being lowered to the ground, and remembered how he'd witnessed that moment just two hours ago.

Her blow was too hard; automatically, Briar's hand closed around her wrist - not forcefully, because it would take her almost no effort at all to break free and pay him back for any use of force. Fury escaping her ability to hide it beneath her perpetual sea of serenity, Daja spun to stare at him - and he could see through her eyes as she saw him. The swollen red around his eyes, though he had not wept as Sandry and Tris did; the slight trembling in every portion of his body.

Daja tugged her wrist free, laid down her tool, and took a step until he could see her long, lovely eyelashes. "I don't hug, like Sandry does," she warned.

"I don't want you to," Briar told her, and it was true. It was, to him, suddenly very clear why he had come here.

"Aren't you supposed to do this with one of your girls?" Daja asked - it was clear to her too.

"Aren't _you_ supposed to with one of 'em as well?" Briar retorted.

Daja shook her head. "It's about the person. Usually a girl, because," she said quietly, "we are far more interesting."

She kissed him.

She kissed him, and he kissed back, and they pretended, so far as they could to one another, that this wasn't as much comfort as sudden, flaring, fire; that there wasn't a trembling, repressed grief welling up and almost out of control.

-

tbc


	4. Niko's Funeral III

Briar stumbled down the stairs to find Tris already seated at the breakfast table, curls unbraided and unable to repress a yawn. As distracted as she was, Tris still noticed before he took a seat beside her; perhaps a night's sleep had sharpened her senses. Daja, whose hearing was just as good, had not noticed him until he stood by her side, the night before, right after the funeral.

But seven hours separated that moment, and this, and morning sun peeked into the small room.

"Morning."

"Good morning." Tris nodded to the teapot squatting in front of her, in a clear invitation.

Briar poured himself a cup, sipped, and savored the burst of lemon on his tongue. He considered asking her about the funeral, considered expressing his concern about her first day in a world where Niko had been put to rest - grief that pressed down his chest; her expression, steady and almost completely without pain, convinced him not to. Instead, over the rim of his cup, he said, "You look like you slept well last night."

She turned red - because Tris didn't blush. Tris turned into one of Rosethorn's perfect tomatoes.

"And," he added, leaning beside her, "I think you dropped one of your laces coming out of Sandry's room."

Tris seemed, for a moment, speechless. Then she shot back, indignant, "I can't count how many times I had tea in the morning with one of your girls."

Briar was shaking his head. "I'm not saying anything... insulting," he told her. "Someone"-Daja, he thought, and remembered the sensation of her lips on his-"once told me that rites are as much for us as for the dead. We don't forget, but we oughta keep living, and after the rites, we can. We gotta."

"You almost sound wise," Tris murmured, "except I know you're quoting Daja." As she said this, Daja and Sandry entered the kitchen, and faint, hesitant smiles were exchanged across the breakfast table.

They, too, sat down, and though grief pressed at four pairs of shoulders, they were living.

-

tbc


	5. Lark's Funeral II

They spent the night of Lark's funeral on pallets in Discipline, though Briar stayed in Rosethorn's workroom. It was, the three girls knew, to keep Rosethorn company, though he would never admit it.

Tris, Sandry and Daja pulled their pallets close together. Or rather, Tris and Daja dragged them to enclose her on each side. She fell asleep with their warm fingers twined between hers, until she felt, maybe, she could shake off the cold...

Lark smiled at her, and said, "I'm dead."

Sandry woke with a start, dragging Tris and Daja with her - though when she carefully poked, Briar still slumbered. Relieved that at least one person she cared for would sleep, Sandry withdrew.

"Sandry," Tris croaked. "Do you know what time it is?" Nevertheless, Tris scooted over before being asked, wrapping a warm arm around her. The light of the waning crescent fell in a stripe beside her, but it did not illuminate Tris's pale skin as their lips brushed in surprisingly warm comfort.

Daja merely sighed, appearing unsurprised, and rolled over onto Sandry's pallet. Her arms enclosed Sandry, then reached further until her molten skin met Tris's hands. The three girls were squashed together; they did not care. It gave Sandry an excuse to burrow her head into the crook of Daja's neck, and listen to Daja's slow, peaceful breathing.

Clinging to one another, as though shared warmth could drive away the emptiness of Lark's absence for just that one precious night, they fell asleep.

-

tbc


	6. Lark's Funeral III

Sandry often wondered how Tris had managed to stand the emptiness.

(She didn't completely, Sandry sometimes remembered; she'd moped around the house, because Niko's death left a gap that Briar and Daja and Sandry could try to fill, momentarily, but could only properly recover given time.)

Sandry had attended the funeral; she had spoken. For the first night, she had slept well, even. But, in the oddest moments, Lark's death would hit her, and she had to stop to tell herself to breathe again. (Sometimes, Briar would be beside her, and would be the one to remind her; sometimes, Briar would just... still... and Sandry would return the favor.)

And just once, Sandry hadn't been able to stop crying - tears welling as Daja laid down her tools, carefully, and embraced her, because Sandry was easy to hug; tears spilling over as she laid her head on Daja's strong shoulders. tears rolling over her cheeks as, almost clumsily, almost unintentionally, their lips found each other's.

They gasped and moaned in a way no one not completely trusted would ever see, and when it was over, they reclined on the bed and stared at each other, cheeks still touching. Sandry closed her eyes and didn't feel empty.

After a moment of staring at the ceiling, Daja murmured, "I thought you didn't like girls... but you and Tris, after Niko's funeral..."

Sandry nodded, and felt Daja feel her do so. "I could let anyone else touch her. Not then, when she was crying too. Besides, you and Briar..."

"Caught," Daja grinned, and kissed her cheek.

But conversation lapsed, after that - and Sandry, in privacy, thought that, just because two ships found each other in a patch of endless sea, it did not mean either was any closer to docking at a port.

-

tbc


	7. Frostpine's Funeral I

Frostpine, Daja thought, would probably find it hilarious that his death had prompted... this.

She had kissed Briar before, and had done more with Sandry, but Tris was a completely new experience. Running her hair across Tris's braids, Daja could feel the curling waves of the ocean (which Frostpine had hated), the molten heat of the earth (which Frostpine had loved), and hurricane winds swirling along the loops of her hair. Her lips were like lightning; sparking, brilliant, stinging, heated, wherever they touched Daja's skin.

Briar was less like a weather-front, and more like the slow shift of mountains forming and oaks bowing. He was skilled and exquisite and his hands made her sigh, made Tris moan with contact.

It was wild and passionate, and Daja's gasps felt far more intense that screaming. (And if she accidentally inhaled sweat, or if someone almost trod on her hair, she could almost ignore it when it was her turn to be kissed.)

Frostpine, Daja thought, would probably find it hilarious that his death had prompted this.

-

tbc


	8. Frostpine's Funeral II

Tris wasn't Sandry. She didn't listen patiently to someone else's worries, like Sandry was so willing to do for them - but she was perceptive and succinct, and terribly good at making her points.

"Do you trust me?" Tris said, straight-forward and without guile. She stretched out a hand.

"Do you need to ask?" Daja answered, taking it.

With a tug, Tris brought Daja's magical self out of her body.

Daja felt her awareness expand to encompass Summersea in its entirety. Bits and pieces of pictures floated by - Tris brushed them away impatiently, with a flick of silver.

They slid out of the house, past Briar, who had only that morning asked her pointedly whether she planned to return to Frostpine's forge for the first time since his death, and swirled like breezes across Summersea's empty streets.

Her mind linked to Tris's, Daja could feel/sense/touch the slow groaning of the earth; the playful wind; soft, rising warmth; the ocean currents, wild and untamed. She could see the beauty of the rising sun - and feel how mist dispersed under its gentle warmth, how clouds, high above, curled and churned under its harsh rays. Tris's awareness was wider than hers; the world had never felt so big.

You told me, Tris said/whispered/sent, well, actually, you told Briar who told me, about moving on after rites. I thought you might need some help.

Slowly, they withdrew from the clouds, from the air over the sea, from the streets of Summersea.

When they returned to their bodies, Daja realized that, in the time she'd been gone, her body had collapsed next to Tris's. She turned, slightly, to grin at Tris, and received the faintest, most reluctant smile in return.

-

tbc


	9. Rosethorn's Funeral I

Tris thought this was becoming something of a habit.

"How – how is she?" Sandry was, as always, the first to broach the topic.

Briar stared at Sandry, then at Tris, and Tris could sense him positively shouting at Daja, who had been rattling around Frostpine's empty forge, across their bond. Daja refused to budge; as calm and as steady as the earth to the very last, when he abruptly shut her out.

He couldn't bodily shove Sandry away, though, who was just as strong in her way as he was; and he couldn't push Tris out of their house at Cheeseman Street.

"Rosethorn's dying." His voice was clipped, and somehow those two words said more than a speech.

Sandry gave a small, shuddering gasp. Tris said, bristling, "Winding Circle has the best healers in the world."

His glare was as cutting as jade. "Lark's roses are dying."

Oh.

Without hesitation, Sandry threw her arms around him. Tris knew, with the anger and grief he exuded, she ought to be surprised that he didn't shrug her off, but she wasn't.

She walked across the room to stand by his side, feeling as though the air had turned to lead, though her magic told her there had been no such thing. Briar's muscles were tense beneath her hand, and barely relaxed as she tightened her grip. He turned his head, to stare at her hand.

Sandry's eyes darted up to meet Tris; she saw Briar's pain reflected there, and her own.

After that, with the knowledge that one course of action had always followed this situation, things seemed inevitable.

Tris leaned forward until her lips met Briar's. She saw Sandry shift behind Briar, and wrap her thin arms around them both. If she leaned past Briar's shoulder, she could kiss Sandry; she did.

The next few hours were a blur of heat, tears and grief. It was sex, and it was comfort, and it was for all the wrong reasons.

-

tbc


	10. Rosethorn's Funeral II

Briar still wasn't used to Discipline without the knowledge that Lark was somewhere close. He had visited it since her funeral, and since Frostpine's, for that matter, but even now, he couldn't help but see her in each shadow.

If it was bad for him though, he knew it had to have been worse for Rosethorn, especially now that Evvy slept in the Earth Temple dormitories, a full dedicate, and Rosethorn lived in the cottage alone. He had visited many times, just to keep her company, because he couldn't lose her too; he still wished he'd done so even more.

"I'm dying," Rosethorn coughed. "Not even you can bring me back, boy. Not this time."

"Winding Circle has the best healers in the world," Briar argued, repeating something Coppercurls had reminded him of; something he hadn't been able to bring himself to believe in.

But Rosethorn was as skeptical as he had been. She almost smiled at that - almost.

The smile turned into a scowl of concentration as she fought to sit up, with the stubbornness that had left her insisting she live out her final days in Discipline. Briar had to remind himself not to help - she had snapped at him when he'd tried, last time.

"I've been worried about you, boy," Rosethorn said, once she'd succeeded.

"Why're you bothered 'bout me when you're-"

"Dying," Rosethorn finished, and Briar thought about how unfair it was, for them to survive a war, for her to survive a volcanic eruption, and then die like this. "Ever since Niko's death, you haven't let anyone else in."

She said it as though it were as plain as the nose on his face. But it wasn't true. As late as the night after his last visit, Sandry and Daja had found him among his shakkans, and Sandry had held the rather willing Briar down by the threads in his clothes while they showed him just how displeased they were at his avoidance.

"And other than Sandry, Tris and Daja?" Rosethorn raised an eyebrow. "Have you visited Evvy? Have you even _talked_ to her?" She raised her hand to touch his face, a motherly gesture he hadn't received since the darkest days of being trapped in the Emperor's prison.

"It would be the saddest thing," Rosethorn continued, "if you never trusted anyone but the girls." Even Rosethorn, Briar sensed she didn't say, had had him, and the girls, and Lark, and Crane, Niko...

But ever since Lark's death, Briar hadn't let anyone see him at all except for the people he couldn't stay away from.

-

tbc


	11. Interlude: Four Funerals

For the majority of their years together, Briar, Tris, Daja and Sandry had shared everything except romance and sex. They'd been fine with it - had been happy. Briar and Daja had their girls, Tris had her intellectual debating partners, and Sandry charmed noblemen's hearts at the Citadel.

Then Niko died, Tris shattered, and Sandry wrapped around her like a woolen blanket until Tris was almost warm. (And in Daja's forge, Briar and Daja shook, but found they did so less so when together.)

It became something of a pattern, after that. When there was a death, two - sometimes three - of the Circle would fall into bed together, maybe find comfort from pain and grief. Sandry clung, because she couldn't lose them again; Daja, because she knew no one else could see her. Tris had no one else to turn to; Briar couldn't bring himself to trust someone else enough to turn to. Afterwards, life resumed as well as it could in the wake of grief, and it was mentioned no more until the next time, the next death.

But in the privacy of their minds, each wondered, what sort of relationship was that?

-

tbc


	12. Rosethorn's Funeral III

It isn't raining.

It's a strange feeling, this vague, puzzling sensation of something being out of place. The source is so simple, it takes her half the burial to figure out what it is. She remembers all these unimportant, disconnected bits and pieces associated with her teachers' separate funerals, like how rain thundered down at each of them; but Rosethorn is being buried beneath a small garden of her herbs, and it isn't raining.

Sandry should be glad. She's certainly not dressed for wild weather, and doesn't expect it even if a weather-witch grieves by her side: Tris has too much control and respect to let her powers run untamed at a monumental occasion like this. Tris's eyes are red, but not weeping; she looks too drained for tears. She looks, Sandry thinks, like she'll indulge in their... method... of dealing with grief, after the funeral. Daja, leaning heavily on her staff, standing at Tris's side and clothed in eye-smarting red, certainly doesn't seem like she'll protest spending the night with Tris, should she ask.

(These things usually go unsaid though, among members of the Circle. It's all action, all sudden impulse.)

They'll keep walking, however heavily. The person Sandry's most worried about is Briar.

\--

" _Go 'way," he mumbled from behind his closed, locked door._

" _No," she said, mastering her voice so it did not shake and quiver with her personal grief for Rosethorn. "You're going to let me in or I'll know why."_

_There was a sharp, surprisingly brittle laugh in reply, making her jump; he sounded like he'd just returned from war and still saw the slaughtered shamans around every corner._

_She pushed uselessly at the door. She battered his mind with words, too caught up with her point to note that he didn't shut her out._

_\--_

It's her second time at Earth temple rites; she's not any readier to see her other foster-mother buried beneath layers upon layers of dirt. Never mind that Lark's been dead for years; never mind that Niko preceded her in death, and Frostpine followed, incinerated in a flame originating from Winding Circle's Heartfire, his body the source of a morbidly beautiful cloud of sparks. Never mind they'd had weeks of foreknowledge of Rosethorn's end; Briar is losing his primary teacher.

She takes one step toward Briar, who stands as close as he can get to the edge of the herb garden; and another, though the air seems to weigh her down. One more, and it's a slow process of moving to stand next to him. She's right there before she sees a long-wilted rose clenched into his fist. Curiosity makes her lift his hand up to stare at it; she's never had a problem with bodily contact with HIM. Briar, despite exuding the clear desire not to be touched, doesn't react.

\--

_He was brooding on the roof, Sandry realized. She exchanged a wry grin with Tris – it looked odd on the more impassive, more collected mage-student's face – and, together, they approached Briar. He looked up with a scowl. "What d'you want?"_

" _We're sitting on the roof, Thief-Boy," Tris said coolly. "Just like you are."_

_Sandry reached over, poking at the hand that held bits and pieces of the thatched roof he'd been absentmindedly pulling out. "Except we're not as rude."_

\--

When the burial is over, Briar pays his own respects by setting the rose by Rosethorn's Garden, as it will be known. Before her eyes, that wilted flower regains deep, impossibly red petals and luster; vines sprout and climb a circle of disused bean-runner poles, decorating it in dark green and blood red. For years to come, Sandry knows, every passerby will be reminded of the roses Rosethorn grew for Lark, out of sharp but genuine love, from which this rose was plucked.

She thinks about her foster-mothers on the way home, and can't help but recall chasing Briar around Discipline's gardens when she caught him filching her needles to tattoo his arms. He was too fast – she'd been forced to resort to tackling him, and then holding him down by his clothes. She recalls that happiness; she doesn't feel it. Everything's just gray: not depressing, but numb.

Somehow, she's not surprised that Briar pauses at the landing after their foster-siblings have forced themselves to bed (separate beds, Sandry can sense). She shouldn't be doing this; she can feel that he knows he shouldn't be doing this. It doesn't stop the desire to drag his head down until it's level with hers, and let him make her forget about funerals, make her remember riding back from Narmon, flushed with victory.

In the moment, in the now, it doesn't stop her from spinning him around to look at her, and leaning on her toes to kiss him.

In the moment, in the now, it doesn't stop his arms from immediately wrapping around her waist, to tug her closer.

It occurs to Sandry that it's never been just them, before she makes herself forget. She still clings. He still spins her around to lean her against the door, his breath wet and heavy by her throat.

And though Sandry knows, and is aware that Briar also knows, that every time they do this they slide further into despair, they spend a sleepless night in Briar's bed and pretend tomorrow will never come.

\--

fin


End file.
